Resting Place
by Lena Ban Obsidian
Summary: Everyone needs a place to rest. Even the nobodies.


** Resting Place**

After the fact Sora would find himself sitting on the beach, with a book in his hand, never reading. And the waves would be crashing, and the breeze he could feel like a whisper in some other when which where world, and the words would come back to him, one by one: 

_We have come to retrieve you, my liege._

And the book would be open, the pages would turn, never stirred by the breeze, never touched by his fingers, but turn they would and they did, and inside of him somewhere, someone-- _someone_-- would be eating it up, like a starving mad dog tearing into a bone, and it was Sora who was never alone. 

Kairi would play every time that she dared on the islands Wakka and Tidus were scared of; they remembered that night, and the powerless feeling of something incredible crushing them down, and Wakka still knew how it felt to be dying, with a hand in his chest and his eyes dark as midnight. They didn't go there anymore, it wasn't safe, wasn't worth their lives. Selphie'd told her that once, when she asked. 

But for Kairi, that place-- that secret place, where once she'd lost all her heart-- was a safe place of warm kinds of feelings. And she'd pull out her chalk, and draw on the walls-- draw with hands that weren't hers, while her eyes did her smiling, and her lips would quirk up, but they were someone else's lips, and Kairi had a friend in that dark secret place that was wearing her face, and she was never alone. 

Riku felt empty. He wandered the shores, and avoided them all, and avoided his parents. They would ask him sharp questions-- where he'd been, what he'd done-- and his father didn't believe him, about the years of his life they'd missed. They only remembered the second year he'd been missing, and it was the first that had been harder; and he dreamed of when he would be allowed to leave home, to live on his own. 

That dream was lonely, though, just thinking of it was lonely, and he wasn't sure if he was ready, and he remembered what it was like, to feel his fingers curling and not be the one who'd curled them, to speak without ever using his voice. He knew that loneliness better than Sora or Kairi ever could, and was glad they didn't know it, and hated that in a way they were like _him_, even if they were the rightful owners of the bodies they controlled. He wished he knew Namine, or Roxas better, but Roxas and himself had been less than friendly and Namine had only unbalanced him. 

Perhaps that made them just like Sora and Kairi and the fact that they were parts of those two even clearer, since he and Sora had always been rivals and Kairi's very presence seemed to him to knock the ground out from under his feet. Perhaps it didn't matter, since only the three of them here at home had ever known or would ever know those two. 

Unlike them, though, Riku was lonely, and did not do himself any favors by leaving them to themselves and each other and their own devices while he distanced himself as much as he could. He stayed on the mainland more than he went to the island, partially because his parents were afraid he'd run away again (he could never convince them that he hadn't run away, even if Sora's mother had accepted the story about being asked to help free another world from danger with a worried frown and a hug to show her relief that Sora had evidently made it through okay) and partially because that secret place where Kairi and the white witch played bothered him at the core of his being; because those shores were cracked and led to the end of the world in his memory, not the sea and Sora smiling there, as tranquil as he could possibly be. 

And on the mainland, there were places to go; no Twilight Town, but they did live in the suburbs of the city of Epoch, and there was every cliche place you could imagine to be found in the city-- it was huge. Almost huge enough that he liked to be in it. Riku had been everywhere that was worth exploring in Epoch when he was younger, though, so the abandoned train station and its crumbling rubble walls held little magic for him, just as the overgrown garden behind that abandoned old house was only a garden, anymore. There were no mysteries, there was no adventure; he would play sports with Wakka and Tidus, and win every time (much to their irritation, because they were terribly competitive and Tidus, at least, was a sore loser), a myriad empty victories. When he wasn't playing with them, or hanging out with Sora (and to a lesser extent Kairi), he was studiously avoiding all of them as best he could; Then, he would take long unplanned walks by himself, carrying a little wooden sword as though it were a weapon he'd crafted from his own heart. 

One such walk was what brought him to the only locale he'd never much cared to explore as a younger teenager: the graveyard on the eastern side of town. 

It wasn't even scary there, and he felt stupid now for having avoided it when younger. The grass was greener than he'd ever realized when he worried about zombies and mummies and the sorts of things that kids thought hid in cemetaries; green enough that when he arrived, he laughed at himself, thinking it funny that no one else had ever pointed out that it was kind of pretty by the cemetary, and Riku was just being a chicken-hearted coward like any sensible kid. 

Maybe that was because he'd always been the only one of the bunch who wasn't really particularly sensible, in the end. At least his pride had been spared the mocking he doubtless deserved for his unfounded fears. 

It wasn't as though there was really anything here; some trees, their branches swaying harmlessly in the wind, a cottonwood or two further down making rustling noises as their leaves spun and sparkled, white gray green gold. There were graves, and the ashes of the dead, and coffins and probably lifeless bodies in them, but that was all. Suddenly he felt stupid and silly and giddily happy that he'd come, even if his feet had been the ones that led him here, not his head. 

Death didn't seem nearly so scary, here in a grassy field with stones that made sure the forgotten would be remembered, at least a little bit. 

Death wasn't scary here, even if he didn't know for sure what it would bring; Death was nothing like the realm of Darkness and the things that really did give him uneasy nightmares. 

He stepped inside feeling eminently calmer than he might have expected to feel, hand sliding off of the hilt of his wooden sword as he passed by tombstones and a mausoleum or two near the entrance. Near one particular grave, there was a statue of an angel that came up to his chest, hands spread to the sky and wings outstretched as though to take flight; he smiled at her, laughing again in spite of himself (he must have seemed terribly irreverent, but fortunately there was no one else here to see it, save some hairy little caterpillars) and putting his hands about the stone of hers, grinning at her. 

"You're kind of a rare breed," he told her confidentially, as though she were more than a statue and this were more than home. "But then, I guess I'm not surprised. Who'd want to watch over people like _us_, right? We get into trouble all the time." 

On some level he thought it was a little weird that he was talking to a statue, but he rationalized that he was doing it because he was relieved to find that statues were the worst he had to fear in this place. Suddenly being in a place filled with dead people wasn't scary anymore, just kind of sobering. He didn't have to worry about expecting to run into anything weird; no mummies, or zombies-- 

"Well..." said a wry voice he only sort of knew, from behind. "It's a better gig than the last one I had, at least." 

--or...ghosts? 

He spun around wide-eyed, disbelief written in eyes that were unnervingly similar to the ones smiling back at him. Spiky hair, cocky grin, that smug as hell voice-- he _did_ know who this was, even if he looked alarmingly different without the coat on. 

And a lot more transparent than when last they'd met. 

Privately, Riku was disgusted with his response to the sight of the man. Some undignified stammering sort of sound that made it past his lips while he was still staring, and his visitor-- if the...ghost? could be called that--grinned widely, putting a hand to his hip and raising the other to shake a finger at him in admonition. "That's no way to greet an old friend, now, is it?" 

"We were never very friendly," he answered, trying to make his voice as dry as possible as he re-examined the man (shadow, whatever) before him from the top spike of his red hair to the bottom of his black boots with those steel-tipped toes. "...Axel, right?" This he said with some degree of real uncertainty, squinting at the green-eyed spectre and wondering why it had been so difficult to even recall that much, even if it wasn't the right name in the end. Maybe that was the way Nobodies were supposed to be; only Roxas and Namine had ever stuck in his mind, and even they were forgettable when he wasn't noticing the ways they influenced Sora and Kairi's behavior. 

The man-- _nobody_, really-- laughed, and applauded, his black gloved hands coming together to make no sound at all. And yet-- and yet, despite the fact that there was none of that muffled popping sort of noise that Riku knew was supposed to come from solid thing bound in leather hitting solid thing bound in leather, he could kind of hear the way it was supposed to sound. He wondered if that was what he was really hearing when he heard Axel speak; even the calming sound of rustling leaves from the nearby trees, and the wind hissing through the grass, seemed easier to hear, more solid, more real. 

Was this really better than being a Nobody? And what exactly was 'this', anyhow? 

"Bra_vo_. Give the man a prize! I'm--" Axel here faltered, his eyes dropping in the direction of his feet, and then he smiled as cheerfully as if he was real and whole and happy as he could possibly be to see Riku. "Surprised you remembered, actually!" Turning towards the nearest cottonwood, he started plodding to it, the loose black pants he was wearing providing an odd sort of contrast to the white expanse of his torso and arms. 

The hole where his heart was supposed to be, that was the thing that bothered Riku most about this picture; but he didn't mention it, instead following the eerie apparition (was he really an apparition, or was he real?) to the cottonwood tree, puzzled. 

Axel stopped next to it, and made the motions of leaning against it, but his aim was off. He ended up leaning against the air about two inches from the trunk of the tree, clearly putting his weight (if he had weight) against it and relaxing there as if there was something solid to hold him up. 

Riku caught himself staring. "So what is it exactly that you want?" He asked, shaking his head and leaning against the tree itself, looking over his shoulder to make sure the nobody didn't disappear in the midst of the conversation and trying his best to sound direct, immoveable. 

...tough. 

"Geez. I'd think _you_ of all people would know better than to ask stupid questions," Axel mused, tapping a forefinger to his cheek and grinning lopsidedly, his green eyes intent on Riku's face. Even in this state of whatever it was-- death, maybe-- the man had those strange little teardrop markings on his face and that same softness about his eyes that Riku had almost forgotten. Was that makeup, eyeliner around his lashes, or did Axel just _look_ like that? "I don't really _want_ **anything**, at the moment." The grin turned into a short laugh, and Axel tipped his head back, looking up through the shimmering leaves to the blue gleam of the sky above. "I don't have a heart to want things with, my friend. Remember?" 

And much to Riku's horror, Axel demonstrated by reaching down and putting one of his hands through the hole in his chest, turning his back and wiggling his fingers through it as he laughed at the expression on his audience's face. 

"...that was really more graphic than I needed, thanks," he managed to say after a moment or two, as Axel resumed leaning against the air around the tree, smiling languidly-- almost happily, Riku would have said, if he hadn't just been reminded that Nobodies couldn't feel-- and shrugging his shoulders. "You could have just said 'I don't' or something." 

"That would hardly be any fun," the nobody muttered, sounding disappointed. 

Grinning in spite of himself, Riku relented. "Point. So...why are you here, then?" 

Waving one gloved hand in dismissal of the question, Axel looked away over the gravestones with a predatory smile. "I heard a rumor there was a ghost chick that used to haunt this place. Remember? When you were a kid you wouldn't come here 'cause you were afraid of her." He winked. "Bet she's my type." 

At the reminder, Riku found that he _did_ know of that rumor, though he wasn't sure that she'd been the main reason he hadn't wanted to come near this place-- that didn't really make sense, since he'd always been the sort of guy to go prove rumors like that false. 

Axel was watching him, he realized, with a knowing look in his half-lidded eyes. Not for the first time, Riku found himself thinking that the nobody looked weirdly like a fox-spirit, if fox-spirits had taken human form. Or maybe a man who'd been wearing a fox-spirit mask, and been imprinted by it or something. 

And all that wasn't important, because mainly Axel just made him vaguely uncomfortable, though not as irritable as he'd have suspected. "...what?" 

"You _do_ remember...don't you?" Axel tapped his sternum, just over that gaping hole, and sighed. "You went out to do _exactly_ what you were thinking. And she was here-- you hadn't expected that." A feral grin flashed between them. "She was real, Riku. Don't you remember? Your heart does." 

He pushed himself away from the tree, nervous, unsure if he should be clutching his head or his heart and wondering if he'd said that out loud or Axel was _doing_ something to him. Would Axel have had reason to do him harm? He couldn't remember-- only that the red-haired nobody had been a mockery of 'friends' with Ro-- 

"That's right, too," Axel said softly from behind him, still standing by the tree, his hands hanging slack at his side, expression gone blank as Riku realized it must really always be, eyes glimmering with something that might have been an emotion, if there'd been a heart to fuel it. "I was friends with Roxas. But I'm not _doing_ anything to you, and I don't have any _designs_ on you. I just think it's funny you don't remember her, that's all." He smiled again, but this time Riku could see where it lacked the pull of a real expression, where the facade ended and the apathy began. 

Apathy; that was what he could read in Axel's eyes, behind that almost-desire for something more. 

"Why would it be funny? It's-- it's not like it was important," he let himself say, wondering if that was rude to say to a nobody. Maybe to Axel, and people like him, everything was important; every little mundane detail that would be forgotten with the passage of time, just like the nobodies themselves. It seemed strange that they might overlook the fact that even 'somebodies' were eventually erased with time too, though, just like everything that ever was or would be in the world. 

Axel shrugged. "I didn't mean funny ha-ha." 

Riku felt hollow again, and looked away. It shouldn't be sad; it shouldn't bother him. 

"It should," said that insistent voice, that voice that had more emotion in it than the eyes he didn't want to look at could hold. "It should bother you a lot. It should bother him-- them. But it doesn't. Why the hell else do you think I would be here?" 

Someone laughed, but Riku was never sure which one of them it was, even years later. 

"...so you're a ghost," Axel said as Riku started to mouth the words, chuckling when Riku looked back, finally, and nearly jumped to see that Axel had moved, was leaning against him now (he didn't feel anything at all), arm slung about his shoulder. "Yes. I am. She was. And if you'll just _remember_ a little more clearly, you'll realize she's kind of a _hot_ lady ghost." 

"But Roxas--" 

"Ha!" Axel laughed, slapping Riku's back hard enough that he almost thought he felt it and moving away to the nearest tombstone to read the epitaph, muttering it under his breath and pretending he wasn't paying attention in the least. "You're a funny guy, Riku," he said without looking back, before making himself look busy again. 

Riku sighed, shaking his head, and followed the apparition over, not bothering to read the words. He watched Axel (rather, his back) instead as they threaded their away along the rows of gray markers, meandering through the grass and sidestepping the ladybugs that passed them on the way. 

Axel reached out to one that had been crawling along a small statue of a dog, over a pet's grave, as if to catch it. His lips twitched slightly as it skittered through the unreality of his fingertips instead of onto them, and he shut his eyes to the world. "How would you know about Roxas, anyway? All you did was take him away and help erase him." He held up a hand to forestall Riku's protest before Riku even realized he'd been about to make it. "I know! Ansem lied to you to get you to do it, I know, I _know_. Don't have a fit." 

Rolling his eyes, Riku stretched, cracking his neck and giving the query a little bit more thought than, admittedly, he might originally have done. "...because he's-- was-- Sora's nobody." He smiled crookedly. "Sora kind of has that effect on people. Even his nobody on other nobodies, I figure." 

"Touche." 

Try as he might not to think of those days, months, years-- minutes, maybe even, he would never really know-- that they'd spent in the realm of darkness, Riku found his thoughts inevitably dragging themselves back there, centering around his wounded leg, wounded pride, his _weakness_ and Sora-- Roxas-- both of them, and how they'd (he'd, whichever) spoken, acted, how Sora had been content to stay where they were if they couldn't get home, so long as Riku was there with him. He saw Axel wince, and regretted his inability to prevent himself from focusing on the memories, on the emotion they brought to the surface of his heart and the reassurance that came with them. He tried to sidetrack himself, but found it difficult, bordering on impossible; even the knowledge that Axel could see what he was remembering, be reminded of his own unimportance to everyone else in the world at large, didn't stop the memories from coming. It was weird, having someone else listen in on his feelings or thoughts, but he got the impression that Axel couldn't really help it, and felt all the guiltier because of it. "Sorry." 

"No." The nobody shook his head, straightening, and chewed on his lower lip as he looked off in the direction of the sea. "Don't be. ...for that, anyway." He laughed softly. "For taking Roxas away, you can be sorry all you want. Not that that matters, either; it's over now, isn't it? What's done is done." 

At some point, the breeze had died down to nothing; and in that near-complete silence, Riku thought maybe, for an instant, that he could hear someone else breathing. Even that was overshadowed by the beating of his own heart, strong slow pulse at the back of his mind. "...I'm sorry," he said, meaning it more than he'd thought he would. 

Axel smiled, waving a hand in dismissal, and continued to the next tombstone with overexaggerated interest. "Does it bother you, knowing that we weren't all just faceless enemies?" He shot Riku a sly grin, wriggling his fingers at the edge of his hole again, teasingly. "Would it have been harder to dismiss us as nothing if you'd seen these before?" 

Swallowing thickly, Riku had to admit to himself that it probably would have, yes. He didn't say as much aloud, but he got the impression Axel would know anyway. "Yeah, but it's like you said. There's not much I can do about it now." 

"You could feel really, really guilty," Axel pointed out helpfully. 

"For how long?" 

"Forever!" The nobody grinned gleefully, throwing his hands out in a dramatic gesture; gradually, he lowered them and shrugged, looking defeated. "I don't know. I'm not really equipped to be a vengeful ghost, as you may have noticed." 

He had, indeed, noticed that. He'd never been huge into fairy tales and the like, but he'd learned enough about so-called occult things and mythology to know that ghosts were 'supposed' to be created intese emotion, usually negative, and a desire to remain in the world of the living rather than pass on to the realm of the dead (whatever _that_ might be). It seemed kind of sad to him that even as a ghost, a nobody couldn't feel enough to do things like be angry (or angry _enough_, anyway) and curse people. Though he supposed he was kind of glad of that latter fact, just now. 

Axel chuckled. "Selfish." 

"...yeah," he agreed softly. "I guess I sort of am." 

They reached the edge of the cemetary after a while. On the inside, the boundary was marked with just a low wooden gate; Said gate was in evident disrepair, sectioning off the edge of cemetary grounds a foot or two short of the cliff and the fifty foot drop it offered from where they stood to the shore of the cove beach below. Here, Axel drew up short, sitting down after a few moments of hesitation. He made a strange sight, all spindly arms and legs and wiry body bent up to sit on the edge of the air just beyond the wood, frowning almost petulantly as he put his chin in his hand and his elbow on one knee. 

Riku sat next to him, and didn't look at him or anything in particular, just letting his mind drift aimlessly as he listened to the waves below. The question came again quite of its own bidding, rising to his lips like a strand of silk that had crawled out of his stomach and escaped via his throat. The words seemed soft and almost not his own. "Why are you here, Axel?" 

Here, and not somewhere else. Why wasn't Axel on the world that the nobody had originally come from, for example? It didn't seem to him that Axel was the sort of denizen that Destiny Islands tended to attract, and Axel himself seemed to recognize little, if any, of the scenery through his own memories. Perhaps that was only natural, since nobodies lacked hearts, and hearts were where memories were stored. Riku waited for an answer, looking over slowly from the corner of his eye, and waited as Axel's eyebrows came down into a frown of concentration. "I don't know," he said first, and then, after a moment or two of musing, he smiled that empty, hopeless smile that Riku was beginning to think was as close as Axel could get to real emotion. "Maybe because this is where Roxas is, kind of." Lips twitching slightly, as though he wanted to smile but was trying not to, Axel sighed. It was strange when the nobody did such things, because his voice was clear enough, but his breathing was almost inaudible; rather than hearing a rush of air, Riku got an impression of emptiness in the sounds around him, for a moment or two. 

But then the birds started chirping again, and the sound of the waves surfaced as the rhythm by which everything was determining time, and Riku couldn't have said if he'd heard Axel sigh or heard the world around him go silent, as though wishing that the nobody was able. 

Axel continued blithely, as though he didn't notice. "Can't go past this fence, any rate, so I guess it doesn't _really_ matter in the end." Green eyes slid up to meet Riku's, guarded and maybe almost worried. "You could, you know, leave and not tell anybody I was here and I couldn't ever do anything about it. Except hopefully I'd find that ghost chick, if you did. It's kind of--" He started to say something that started with 'l.' For some reason or other, he'd changed his mind before it really came out. "--boring here, you know?" 

Considering that, Riku lifted a hand-- quite without thinking-- to clap it on a shoulder that wasn't there, startled when his hand passed through in harsh reminder. He laughed at himself, embarrassed. "I'm not going to do that, though." 

"...oh?" Axel's voice quavered slightly, almost surprised. 

"You're really not a very scary ghost," he pointed out wryly, smiling just a bit. "And it's a little weird, being around Sora and Kairi with..." With _them_ inside. It wasn't a bad thing-- not by a long shot, because Sora and Kairi had benefitted from joining with Roxas and Namine too-- but it was...weird. 

It was something he couldn't be a part of, even if he'd wanted to-- and he wasn't even sure if he wanted to or not. 

Axel didn't say anything, and when Riku looked he suffered a moment of irritation, thinking that the nobody was pretending not to have heard, looking away over the ocean like that; but when he followed suit, to see what was so important, he understood. 

He'd done it so many times before, it was kind of easy to make the connection. Looking at the horizon was a little like looking at the future, trying to see whether he could reach it or not; so when he gave it a moment's thought, he felt how confining it might be, to be stuck in the graveyard with the sea right behind him, beckoning and tempting him when he knew he couldn't leave. 

Axel grinned toothily at him, and said nothing as he looked away again. 

"...it's not fair," Riku decided, watching the waves and the distant horizon for a long few minutes, ignoring the breeze as it breathed aboout him in a chaotic little spiral, stirring his hair as it passed. Axel looked at him, curious and yet, largely silent. 

"Hm?" 

"That you're stuck here," he clarified. "It isn't fair." And it wasn't just something to say, some random small-talk comment that he didn't mean. Riku remembered Castle Oblivion, and the World that had Never Been. He remembered the Organization-- all of them, though Sora could not-- and he remembered walking among them, blindfolded, only learning them by the way they acted and the sound of their voices when they spoke. 

And he remembered, perhaps most importantly, that Axel had been a lot like him, in some ways. 

He looked back, and was surprised to find Axel watching him intently, looking so unconsciously miserable that he was fairly certain the expression wasn't an act but the reality he'd been unable, previously, to see. "Being caged up like this, this close to S--" No. "Roxas." 

Axel nodded slowly, saying nothing, eyes beginning to flicker away to safer territory than the challenge in the boy's gaze. 

"It hurts, doesn't it?" 

Leaning forward, Riku grabbed up a handful of dead leaves of grass, reaching over the edge of the fence past the dropoff where the cliff started and opening his hand to let them fly down on the breeze. As they fell, twisting and twirling, they seemed to somersault down the side of the cliff to the shore beneath, too tiny to tell if they'd landed in the warm sand or on the moving water. Axel watched them closely and said nothing. In a way, though, that was more of an answer than words. 

Riku tipped his head to the side, thoughts taking a different route than they'd originally been following. Fruitlessly, he'd been considering possible solutions-- if there really was such a thing as a solution for Axel's imprisonment-- to the problem, but. There _was_ an option that he was fairly sure would work. ...maybe. "What if I took you with me?" 

Axel's eyebrow rose, expression distrustful, skeptical; almost sarcastic. "Take me with you? You can't touch me to take me, for one thing, and even if I tried to walk past the boundary it wouldn't work." The nobody grinned hugely, almost patronizing-- almost, but not really, because he wasn't really anything at all, when all was said and done. "Imagine yourself walking into a big, rock wall; _that's_ what would happen. Besides, you don't owe me anything, after all." 

The only answer Riku gave him was an unperturbed expression of determination, and the offering of an open hand. 

And he was surprised to find himself taking it, all protests cast aside. 

. . . 

Sora and Kairi had been playing leapfrog at the edge of the shore; naturally this had led to getting considerably sandier than might have been ordinarily considered acceptable by parental units. At some point before he'd been able to do the same to her, and after she'd kicked off her shoes, as they were just a hindrance, Kairi had shoved Sora into the water. He surfaced now with a fish in his teeth, wriggling his eyebrows as Kairi laughed herself breathless. When she had calmed enough to watch, he released it, spitting it back into the salty foam of the waves about him and making a face. "Next time get your own sushi!" He returned to shore, still rubbing at his mouth to try to rid himself of the taste of live, wriggly fish. Anyone _else_ might have been worried about how hygenic it was to catch a fish in one's teeth and not immediately cleanse one's mouth with potent, almost acidic mouthwash, but anyone else would not have been the Keyblademaster of Destiny Islands, and thus it didn't really matter what anyone else would have done. Only that the fish had tasted icky, and he was displeased. 

Kairi was still in stiches, and so it was Sora who saw him approaching first, and waved to Riku with an enthusiastic smile. "Hey, Riku! Wanna play leapfrog? I think Kairi's finally getting the hang of it!" 

Riku, who'd been approaching with a small, red fruit cradled in his hands, rolled his eyes and tossed the mango to Sora, shaking his head. To Sora's credit, the boy caught it with ease, lasting a whole thirty seconds before he looked at the fruit in puzzlement, trying to determine if it, like the paopu fruit, was meant to have some kind of _deep meaning_ or whatever. Riku's voice broke through his thoughts, strangely not quite as he remembered it sounding the last time they'd spoken. "Looks like I bring home the bacon--" He reconsidered. "Mango, in this faminly. Hope that doesn't make me 'mom'." The grin on the silver-haired boy's lips seemed strange, in a way that Sora couldn't quite place, and he consciously dismissed it. 

His hands had gone slack for some reason, though, and he couldn't think why his eyes stung with tears, but he didn't bother to wipe them away, instead tilting his head in curious wonder at Riku as the boy sighed, and knelt to pick up the mango from the sand, where Sora's nerveless fingers had let it fall. 

Kairi stopped in the middle of teasing him about being clumsy, and watched them both with a look of surprise, not interfering. 

"Why do I feel so sad?" he asked, even as he clasped Riku's hand and helped the taller boy to his feet. 

Riku smiled, steadying himself. "Don't. Feel happy," he murmured with someone else's voice, turning away to offer the fruit to Kairi. 

His heart ached, but Sora nodded to himself, sharply, and brushed the unexplained tears away. With a bright smile, he offered Riku a pocket knife his father had recently given him-- the better to peel the mango with--recovered from the momentary sensation of being not-himself. The fruit was fresh and sweet and took all their minds off of the strange feelings they'd had moments before, as Riku told them of his latest walk and Sora showed off the latest acrobatic stunt he'd discovered he could do without breaking a sweat. Kairi shared a few drawings, but only reluctantly, after a great deal of prodding from the other two. 

And that day melted into the stream of all the rest, almost forgotten, ultimately unimportant; but later, when Sora would sit alone on the beach with his books and Kairi would go to the cave, Riku took up his perch on the palm tree. There he sat for hours in silent conversation with himself, watched the far off horizon, and wore a sardonic, toothy grin that was right at home on his lips. 


End file.
